"We, a group of Chicago Jewish artists, in presenting our works to the builders of Biro-Bidjan are symbolizing with this action the flowering of a new social concept wherein the artist becomes moulded into the clay of the whole people and becomes the clarion of their hopes and desires....Thus we will better translate in our media these aspirations for a new and better life...to a more understanding world, from our fountain of creation the first sparkling glimpses that are the new Jew in the making." - Statement issued by Chicago artists, 1937 In 1935, ICOR (Association for Jewish Colonization in the Soviet Union) encouraged a group of American artists to donate over 200 works of art to the people of the Jewish Autonomous Region. The gift included paintings, drawings and sculptures which were first exhibited in New York and Boston and sent to Moscow in late 1936. However, the collection never found its way to the Jewish Autonomous Region. and the fate of these works of art is unknown. Two years later, a group of Jewish artists from Chicago celebrated the Jewish Autonomous Region by issuing this portfolio of 14 lithographs.